Categories

There are six categories in this year’s awards program:

Global Strategy

Connection Strategy

Recognizes strategic thinking that directly led to smart and innovative use of media that connects consumers to brands in relevant and transformative ways.

National Strategy

Recognizes marketing efforts that spanned an entire country, either in the United States or in the country for which they were designed.

Nonprofit

Recognizes work done in support of a social cause or not-for-profit company.

Product/Service Creation

Recognizes new product ideas, service offerings, launches and the like.

Regional Strategy

Recognizes thinking that influenced a marketing initiative at the local or regional level, either in the United States or in the country for which it was designed.

PRIZES

Trophies will be given to Gold, Silver and Bronze winners. A Grand Prix prize will be awarded to the one entry that our executive judging panel deems to be the best of all the papers submitted across all categories.

Deadlines & entry fees

4A's Members

Non-Members

Early Deadline: 6/15

$550

$600

Regular Deadline: 7/6

$800

$850

Final Deadline: 7/27

$975

$1025

Eligibility

Only submissions that were in the market at some point since January 2017 may be entered.

If you entered last year and your entry won an award, you may enter the case in another category, provided that there is substantial new information, insight and creative to make a strong case in that category.

If you entered last year and did not win an award, you may enter a rewritten case, provided your resubmission includes new information in regards to insight, creative and/or effectiveness.

The Written Case Study

Your case study is expected to include:

A title.

A written case study. Your written study has two parts (in a single file):

A 200-word introduction that specifically explains the impact that strategy had on the resulting campaign or outcome. Papers that do not include this will be disqualified.

The main portion of the paper has a maximum of 1,500 words (this word count does not include the 200-word summary), and should comprise the following:

A clear understanding of the background and the business challenge.

A great story of how brilliant strategic thinking changed the course of the communications development.

Clear evidence that the creative idea that resulted from this thinking was both original and impactful.

Creative Supplementary Materials. Feel free to illustrate your case study with creative examples and embedded videos. Remember, however, that we publish winning papers, so don’t include visuals that you don’t hold rights on or could not obtain rights for, e.g., New Yorker cartoons or undocumented information on competitors.

Content of Submission Information

Your submission includes:

Written case study (as outlined above)

Creative supplementary materials

We strongly recommend that you submit a two- to three-minute Case Study video as an impactful way for judges to see your strategic brilliance come to life.

You can submit up to five pieces of supporting creative examples, one of which can be the case study video.

Accepted file formats: .doc/docx, .pdf, .mpg, .mov, .mv, .mp4, .ppt. For interactive: you can submit a linked image (.doc/docx, .pdf, .ppt) or you can submit a video. Always be sure to check that the link in an image works.

You are encouraged to include visual examples of any creative elements beyond traditional communications if they were employed as part of the execution (e.g., architecture, in-store design, uniform design, etc.). These elements can be included in the written paper or as separate files.

Things to Consider

1.It’s critically important that the strategic contribution is clear in every paper and that it is not eclipsed by the creative work. We want to be able to clearly see what you did and how it made a difference in getting to the outcome.

2.Let’s not forget insight - often the essential ingredient of great strategies. Your paper should highlight the insight; tell us how you uncovered it and what you did with it.

3.Planners and Strategists face multiple challenges in their work, and getting to greatness is often a complicated journey. Your paper should document your internal and external challenges and tell us how you managed to overcome them.

4.In many agencies, planning now often involves teamwork. In your papers, we want to understand how Account Planners/Strategists led their multi-disciplinary teams and what the contributions of the team members were.

5.Judging criteria: We want to keep it simple and straightforward, while placing a premium on the strategic contribution. The scoring for all entries will be weighted as follows:

How good is the strategic idea? 40 percent

How well is it linked to the outcome? 30 percent

What were the market results? 20 percent

How well is the story told? 10 percent

Papers scoring highest on these criteria will make it to the second round of short-listed entries. To select Gold, Silver and Bronze winners from the short list, judges may elect to conduct Q&A sessions with the entrants via Google Hangouts.

6.The overall Grand Prix winner will be selected from the main category Gold award winners.

DO NOT!!

Names of the agency or agency individuals cannot appear in the written case study or at any time onscreen. You can include client/brand names.

Please check the naming convention of your files—they cannot include your agency name. (Also be careful that the file name doesn't include any other competing agency.)

Papers exceeding the proper word count will be eliminated in Round 1. However, photo captions and graphs are not subject to this word-count restriction.